Dark Corners

Old Soldiers Never Die

As the tour bus rounded the circle and approached the Virginia end of the Arlington Memorial Bridge, Mark glanced to his left. Johnny was sitting next to the window, looking through the winter grime toward Roosevelt Island, seeing neither the island nor the fresh flakes of snow falling into the pale gray waters of the Potomac. Johnny Nolan’s face was lined and hard set above a full beard salted with gray. The maroon stocking cap on his head was jammed forward, almost covering his eyebrows. The narrowed eyes beneath those brows were dark circled and a long way from the snow and slush of Washington, DC. He was back in the jungle, decades in the past, trying hard to forget the things he refused to remember. Mark rubbed his eyes and nodded. That was the problem with them all, he reminded himself.

“Why didn’t you get off at the Arlington stop?” he asked Johnny. The man next to the window closed his eyes, turned his head from the wintry scene, and hunched his head down into his shoulders as he attempted to snuggle some warmth from the collar of his faded olive jacket.

“Why didn’t you get off at the cemetery?” Mark insisted. “You made a contract with the group.”

“I know. Sorry.” Johnny let out a long sigh and closed his eyes. “I just couldn’t.”

“You’ve heard it a thousand times, man. If you don’t face what happened and accept it, you’re never going to be able to let go of it.”

A flash of anger passed over Johnny’s features. It quickly faded, leaving him as he had been for twenty three years: frightened, hostile, confused, depressed, and desperate in his isolation and loneliness. “They’re all still alive in my head, Mark. I see them just like they were then. That’s the way I want to remember them.” He pulled a bare hand from his jacket pocket and waved it around. “On the TV I see these beer-gutted, balding old farts carrying signs in front of the V.A., and I don’t know them.” He lowered his hand to his lap. “I see my own balding head in the mirror, and I don’t know me.”

He reached into his jacket pocket and removed a photograph from it. He looked down at the plastic laminated picture, then faced it toward Mark. It depicted eleven young soldiers standing, squatting, and sitting before a burned out piece of North Vietnamese artillery. The young men were grinning and waving. Not one of them looked older than twenty, although back in group Johnny had said his sergeant, Glenn Dunham, had been close to thirty. Mark could see the young Johnny Nolan standing in the center at the back. He had his arms over the shoulders of the two men who stood at either side.

Young, thought Mark. We were all young once upon a time.

Johnny put the photo back onto his pocket and resumed his look out the window of the bus. The traffic on the icy bridge was slow and heavy. It was getting dark. Evening rush hour was beginning, more snow, more cold. “You know what really pisses me off?” asked Johnny.

“What’s that?”

“The new kid. The one who joined the group day before yesterday?”

“Dennis,” Mark stated.

“Yeah. Desert Storm Dennis.”

“How does he make you angry?”

Johnny turned from the window and stared at Mark, his expression shocked. “Why? What kind of a stupid question is that?”

“My kind, I guess.”

“Jesus, Mark, don’t you ever get tired being a saint?”

“How does Dennis make you angry?”

“Oh, yeah,” sneered Johnny. “Find your center, work the process, get in touch with your feelings. How does Dennis make you feel?”

“Okay,” said Mark, “So how does Dennis make you angry?”

The bus lurched, found an opening in the traffic, and moved into it. Through the bus’ windshield Mark could see the top of the Lincoln Memorial, the barest outline of white against the falling snow. Johnny Nolan was frowning and glowering at his own fists. “Damned Dennis. His war lasted a hundred damned hours and he needs his head screwed back on, not because of all the friends he saw killed, but because of all the Iraqis he thinks he might have killed. What a load of crap.” Johnny faced Mark, his eyes glistening. “They’re still throwing parties and putting on parades for the bastards! Christ, I even saw a damned Bart Simpson doll wearing desert camouflage!”

“So, what I hear you saying, Johnny, is that you’re jealous.”

“You’re god damned right I’m jealous!” Johnny glanced up at all of the faces in the bus that were looking back at him. He slumped back in his seat, sighed, and nodded. Embarrassed once again, he glared at his knees. “Yeah. Jealous. Who wouldn’t be? A parade isn’t much, but it’s better than having people spit on you.”

The air brakes squealed as the bus pulled up at the stop on the circle in front of the Lincoln Memorial. Mark grabbed the back of the seat in front of him and pulled himself to his feet. Once he was standing he looked down at Johnny. “This is our stop. Are you coming?”

Johnny looked around. “I don’t see it.”

Mark pointed. “It’s up there, a couple hundred yards north off Bacon Drive.”

“I don’t know. It’s just a damned list of names.”

“Come on, Johnny. It’s part of the treatment.”

“Treatment,” muttered Johnny as he angrily shot to his feet and shouldered his way past Mark out of the bus, Mark following in his wake.

They walked the snow covered sidewalks in silence until the black gash of the memorial’s east wall leaped out from the dull white that covered Constitution Gardens. The wall was an enormous horizontal splinter pointing toward the Washington Monument. They stood, looking at the memorial from a distance.

Said Johnny at last, “Did you ever hear what that one brass hat said back when they were trying to get this thing built? He said, ‘Why build a memorial to losers?’”

“He’s an asshole, Johnny. The world’s full of them. Let’s go.”

The path was difficult to see in the diffused light, and Johnny followed in Mark’s footsteps until they reached the eighteen inch high end of the memorial’s west wall. The west wall pointed directly at the Lincoln Memorial. Half buried in the snow at the foot of the wall were tiny American flags, bits of paper, toys, photos, and other mementos. Here and there, their stems thrust into the cracks between the black granite slabs, were flowers. A bright yellow carnation, a withered rose. An elderly woman glanced at Johnny, her gaze met his for an instant, and he turned away. There were only a handful of visitors before the wall, each one within his or her own wall.

The wind driven flakes stung Johnny’s skin as he looked down and saw his legs reflected in the polished surface of the granite. Then he saw the names cut into the stone across his legs.

Turning away from the wall he swallowed and took a deep breath. “I’m not sure about this.”

Mark placed his arm around Johnny’s shoulders. “I’m here with you, man. Come on. You know you have to do this.”

“Listen. Mark, listen.” Johnny sniffed back his tears. “You know, with them all dead and me alive, I used to wonder if there was some reason. You know, God? Maybe I’d been saved for something big, important? But what did I do with it? My life? I can’t stand being near anyone, I can’t hold down a job, and all I can do is bum around and try to keep a step ahead of the nightmare.”

“Come on, Johnny. Your time on the wall’s further down.”

“I don’t know if I can face those names,” said Johnny as he stumbled toward the ever thickening wall. “How can I face them?”

“Like you said, Johnny. It’s only a list.”

They stood before a panel ten feet tall, deep within Nineteen Sixty Nine. Mark kept his hand on Johnny’s shoulder as Johnny’s eyes searched from the top of the slab toward the bottom. Down and down his gaze fell until it was wrenched to a halt a foot above eye level: Joseph E Levy.

“Oh, Joe,” said Johnny, the name escaping quietly from his lips as he reached up with his hand and touched the letters. His vision filled with tears. “Joe.” Johnny Nolan’s mouth broke into an involuntary smile. “Joe. He was a joker. Funny. Real funny guy. He could imitate anyone. In basic when my parents came down to Fort Jackson for graduation, Joe met them. My dad liked Joe a lot. Joe and Mike Hallet came home with me on leave after basic.” He shook his head and began to turn away but his fingers touched another name: Glenn A Dunham.

“Sarge. God, sarge.” He looked at Glenn Dunham’s name so intensely and for so long it was as though he had been cast in tortured steel. At last Johnny closed his eyes and shook his head. “Dunham. He seemed so ancient back then. Such a rock, so full of wisdom. What was he? Twenty seven? Twenty eight? When he died he couldn’t have been more than twenty eight.” Johnny looked at Mark. “In another month I’ll be forty four.”

He looked back at the wall, and as he began taking his fingers away from Glenn A Dunham’s name, they touched another. He found Gerald P Ross, Edward I Lawson, Richard K Garrison, Anthony R Geneso, L Randall Brown.

“Hey, Leroy,” said Johnny as he coughed and laughed. The laugh was forced, for Johnny Nolan’s eyes were wide and haunted. Wiping the tears from his eyes with his sleeve, Johnny kept looking at where his fingers touched the name of L Randall Brown. “Leroy. He really hated the name Leroy. Man he was the blackest, angriest, bitterest sonofabitch I ever met in my life. Nineteen, twenty years old. He hated the name Leroy, so naturally we all made a point of calling him Leroy.” Johnny frowned as his eyes focused on the past.

“I saw him get it.” He moistened his lips and swallowed. “I saw Leroy die.” He glanced up and looked at Mark. “It was a night straight out of Hell. The noise. People dying, fires and gun flashes everywhere, smoke, screams, damned mortar rounds falling all around, the dirt down my shirt and in my eyes. They were all over us. Leroy and me shared a fighting hole near the wire. We could hear the damned sappers talking to each other. Leroy, he touched my shoulder and pointed. I could see the silhouette of someone cutting through the wire. I aimed and dropped him. I looked back at Leroy and he was leaning up against the side of the hole, his head open at the neck. Like a rubber doll his head was back.”

Johnny’s face drained of color as he touched the fingers of his left hand to his throat. “An arm. An arm grabbed me. Strong. An arm grabbed me and there was a sharp pain in my chest.” His eyes focused on the polished black granite surface as his fingers moved down the names; past the names he knew, his friends, his enemies, past the names he didn’t remember, and the names he never knew, until at eye level his fingers stopped on the name John V Nolan.

The edges of the letters were clean and sharp. As he felt them beneath his fingertips, he thought he could read them through his fingers, through the back of his hand. Taking his hand from the wall, he turned it over and saw through his palm the tiny American flag that someone had left at the foot of the wall.

“Mark, my hand!” He faced Mark and saw that Mark’s eyes were filled with tears.

“It’s okay, man. Just let go. It’s way past time. Let go.”

The soldier was a mist, a vapor, then only a memory. A few scratches in a black granite slab.

Mark was alone. On the snow at his feet was a photograph of eleven young soldiers standing, squatting, and sitting before a burned out piece of North Vietnamese artillery. The young men were grinning and waving. The young Johnny Nolan stood in the center at the back. He had his arms over the shoulders of the two men who stood at either side. Mark picked up the photo and stuck it in the crack to the left of Johnny Nolan’s name.

Back at the bus stop, Mark climbed the stairs into the bus, took a seat, and closed his eyes. He was happy to be riding back from the wall all alone. And sad.